First drafted on the 4th and 5th of July with the prompts of: Fourth of July, Car Lights, America. In the following months it grew from it's original ~3,000 words to over 7,000.
...
Alfred waves a lazy goodbye to his friends from work as they part ways on the sidewalk outside the club. They're all laughing, and he wishes he had parked his car closer to theirs, that he could fall into the middle of the group where the laughter is bright and the smiles are brilliant.
Instead he hums, still feeling the echoes of the pulsing music that surrounded him as he danced among sweaty bodies in the club. Then, with a few steps around a building, the raucous noise of late-night celebration muffles to a deceptively distant reverberation.
He's just a bit tipsy, not enough that he's going to call a taxi, but enough to turn the neon lights of the city down to a more tolerable level of glare and to give him a bit of a flush. His mind settles into the steady vibration of his sneakers on concrete as the neon lights mix into the yellow-white glow of streetlamps.
He presses the crossing button and leans against the pole to watch the glowing orange numbers from the other crosswalk countdown to zero, despite the fact that he hasn't seen more than one car since he turned off the main street. The lights change and he walks out onto the street, glancing over to see a car approaching the intersection to his left. He'll have to amend his previous statement, he's seen two cars now.
It's a surprise when he gets a quarter of the way across his side and the glaring car lights don't slow down. His breath catches behind his teeth and instead of getting him moving like it's supposed to, his mind provides, oh shit, Mattie's gonna be a bitch about this and refuse to put American flags on my grave. Fuck you too, Mattie.
And then his face stings with the bitter bite of asphalt and someone's grunting into his ear. He squeezes his eyes shut as the blinding memory of car lights burns into his retinas.
He tries to shake his head to get rid of the image, pebbles and grit clinging to his face with a painful sting. Clenching his teeth, he props himself up on his elbows and turns to look at the weight sprawled on his back.
He can see enough of the person's body and head to assume he's a man, but his face is turned away to look back at something further behind him.
The man's clenched hand digs into Alfred's shoulder, which prompts Alfred to say "You alright, man?" to cover up an aggressive hiss of pain.
Green eyes snap back to his. They're a little too panic-filled for Alfred to deal with right now. "No. I am not alright! I just saved you from fucking death but now, of course, luck would have it that I get my own foot crushed in the meantime. I mean what kind of bloody fucking deal is that?! Save some twat's life: get crippled. I'm never going anywhere ever again if this is what I get. That blooming market is cursed! First I get lost on the way there, then lose my credit card in the parking garage, then this! But of course it's my–BLOODY HELL. FUCKING SHIT. YOU ARSEHOLE–"
Alfred continues to move carefully out from under the man even as his profuse apologies are drowned out by the other's agonized protests. Then he catches a glimpse of the man's foot. He has to look away and close his eyes.
After a moment, he let's his brain acknowledge the adrenaline fueled input from his senses again. The man is still cursing and rambling like he'll die if he keeps his mouth shut.
Alfred's confused as to how such a small man could have pushed him out of the way of a car, but he supposes it doesn't matter as long as they're both alive.
He fumbles his phone out of his pocket and dials 911 against the backdrop of an American flag on his second try. He turns away from the man, sits in an awkward almost-cross-legged position, and covers his other ear so as to better hear the dialing tone: the man's cursing isn't great background when he's trying to stay calm and talk to someone. Alfred takes another shaking breath as the call goes through. Damn, this adrenaline is not going down.
"911, what is the location of your emergency?"
"Oh uh um. We're at 2nd street and Oak Avenue."
"What's your name."
"Alfred F. Jones."
"Alright, sir. Can you tell me exactly what happened?"
"Uh, I was, I was. Well a car almost ran me over when crossing the street. Then this guy pushed me out of the way, but I think his foot got caught under the car and it doesn't look good. I think the tire crushed it or something." That was probably a shit explanation. Is this what operators deal with everyday? He wouldn't be able to clearly decipher a single sentence of what someone was saying if it came in that kind of quality.
"Are you with this person now?"
"Yeah, yeah. Sitting right next to him."
"Is he conscious?"
"Uh, yeah. He's definitely conscious." The man gives out a particularly loud string of curses and Alfred winces.
"Alright, sir. I have the police and an ambulance on the way to help you."
"Wait! Should I uh, move him off the street? I don't want to hurt him."
There's a pause. "Try to move off the street if possible, and at the very least make sure you're visible to oncoming traffic."
"Al-alright."
"Is there anything else you need assistance with?"
"Uh, no. I think I'm good."
"I'm hanging up now, but help will be there soon."
"Okay."
When the line goes dead his heart seems to beat louder and faster to make up for the silence that follows a pained gasp from the man as he turns from his belly to back, hiking his uninjured leg up to support his half-sitting position.
Alfred lets the phone drop into his lap, blinking at the smudges of blood on the screen from his cheek and fingers before turning back to the man. He's clearly British, what with the curses and accent, and Alfred briefly wonders what he's doing here before forcibly reminding himself that right now here is sprawled out in the middle of the road where it isn't actually safe.
He grimaces as he stands up, pain shooting through his legs as his initial preoccupation with what his mind decided was more important fades away. There's a particularly nasty scrape on his knee where the asphalt tore through his jeans. The man's curses, quieter with exhaustion, stutter through a brief pause of confusion when Alfred wiggles his arms underneath his legs and around his back. He lifts him up in his arms bridal style. If he wasn't as strong as he was, he doesn't think he could hold up a pillow with all the adrenaline pumping through his veins, making his limbs buzz like they've been filled with static. The man's curses aren't dying down, having begun with a new venom after Alfred's trembling ended up tapping the man's mangled foot on the ground. Alfred rather thinks at this point that he'd be more worried if they did stop. They didn't seem to have any target, damning the car's driver in the same breath as "this whole manky nation".
He sets him down on the curb, careful to not bang his foot down this time. The man lets himself fall back onto the sidewalk, propping his foot up on the edge of the curb so that he drips blood into the gutter. Alfred glances over at him with concern and the start of a question before being silenced by clenched teeth and a glare. Both of them avoid looking at the man's foot, the man in question throws an arm over his face to form a shield against the world around him. Alfred can't keep his eyes from the trail of blood scattered like breadcrumbs from the bigger stain a few feet into the pedestrian crossing, almost perfectly lined up with to the dotted line separating the left turn lane from the main lane.
"Do you need–"
"I'm in bloody fucking agony you tosser. Piss off."
Alfred returns to staring at the blood, leaning onto his tucked up knees and picking at the edges of the new hole on the right knee of his jeans.
A police car arrives and he answers their questions more clearly than he had with the 911 operator. Contrary to what people always told him, the disorientation only lasted a bit. The adrenaline doesn't seem to care about his mindset though and he can't hold a full cup of water without spilling some down the side. This sucks.
The police ask him to testify and write some stuff like contact information down. It's then he fully realizes the car that almost killed him drove away, and like, what the fuck? They ask the other man a couple questions and Alfred casually learns his name is Arthur Kirkland.
What a nice name. It needs to be compressed into an annoying nickname immediately.
Too bad Arthur's ushered away to tend to his foot.
He asks if he can ride along with him but the paramedics say they can't have him in the way. He doesn't ask again.
The paramedics make sure to properly clean up his face, knee, and hands. Once they make sure they're only surface wounds and he won't sue them if he goes and gets them infected, they let him go.
He goes to the hospital in his own car after the ambulance leaves.
There's a couple people at the desk, so he sits down in a chair for a minute to rest his wobbling knees and tell his jittering hands to calm down. It's been a whole fucking hour body, calm down.
He falls asleep.
Someone nudges him awake and he looks blurrily at the woman sitting beside him before remembering why he's there. The people at the desk tell him not even family is allowed to visit yet. He waves away their concern about his own wounds before walking out to his car.
He goes home and falls asleep in his own bed.
He thinks the aftermath of something like this should be more dramatic and filled with tears, but it's just boring paperwork and elevator music filled calls. He thought it would change his life or something.
He examines the scratches on his face from the gravel in the mirror with a kind of grim satisfaction. They make him look awesome. Too bad only the knee is likely to scar.
He wishes he could have been the hero instead.
It's oddly simple to return back to normal life, but he supposes he wasn't the one to get his foot crushed.
Once his work friends make sure he's ok, they tease him relentlessly for a week. They won't let him cross any street without a barrage of sarcastically concerned quips and an entourage of what feels like twenty people, but is actually only five, acting as a shield each time. All of them giggling and stumbling over each other the whole way across. Idiots.
He wonders how Arthur's doing.
On an open evening, he sits down with his laptop and searches for Arthur Kirkland. A twitter and facebook pop-up along with a business site. He only resorts to the business site after seeing that the social media accounts are both private. The site advertises Arthur as a freelance editor and only presents him with a work number.
After a couple more minutes of fruitless searching, he grabs his phone and punches the number in with a resigned sigh, hanging his head off the edge of the couch and swinging his feet onto the back.
"Hello, this is Arthur Kirkland. Is there any way I can help you." the voice on the other side says.
"Hi! It's Alfred."
"I'm sorry, but I don't think I know anyone by that name." Oh, woops.
"I'm that guy you saved from a car crash like a week ago. You know? Got your foot crushed for." Which was probably not the best way to open but fuck it.
"Oh." It's not a light 'oh', but a resigned one. There's some muffled shuffling of what's probably papers before he says, "What do you want." Brutal. It seems when he's not explicitly cursing out the entire country, Arthur keeps all his anger implicit in the tone of his words. Even then, the professionalism in Arthur's voice is oddly disorienting.
"I was wondering if I could get you a coffee or something? I feel kind of bad about the whole thing. I mean, even though it wasn't my fault at all or anything!"
"I really don't care about any naive attempts at bloody reconciliation."
"Aw come on. You don't even have to talk to me beyond telling me your order. It's a free drink." He knows he's practically begging at this point, but he can't just let what's basically a life debt go unattended. He's not used to being the helpless damsel in distress.
There's a substantial pause. "Fine. I like tea better though."
"Ok. Bitty Bakes has some great drinks and pastries. Tomorrow at five?" says Alfred.
"Fine." The call ends.
He lets out a relieved sigh before realizing Matthew's leaning on the arm of the couch and nearly screams.
Matthew puts his chin in his hand. "I thought you swore not to go on any dates after binge watching every sitcom available on Netflix."
"This isn't a date!" Alfred whines and throws a pillow at Matthew.
"Oh so you're just going to 'hang out' like middle schoolers and blush every time your fingers touch," says Matthew. His grin is lost behind another barrage of pillows.
One day and ten minutes of agonizing debate over the wanted-dead-or-alive-schrodinger's-cat versus the red if-this-shirt-looks-blue-than-you're-going-too-fast t-shirt later, he arrives at Bitty Bakes in the blueshift shirt and leans against the counter by the window. He's early enough to have a few minutes to look around the familiar shop. People chat, inside and out, over their drinks and pastries.
Students from both the nearby highschool and community college hammer away at their keyboards or scribble in their notes while nursing their beverages. Late at night, the shop's corners are filled with frantic students right up until the closing time at eleven, but right now there's more ties and white-shirts and people talking on their phone asking their family for orders. Alfred just came from work too, but he changed when he left the lab. He fiddles with his t-shirt and lets his mind wander as he watches people go by.
When Arthur walks up to the shop, Alfred scrambles to justify his defense against Matthew's school-yard taunts, even if only to himself. Before, Alfred had been focused on the blood and situation and immediate consequences. Now, all that's gone and Alfred's free to notice every little detail. Even leaning heavily against crutches, Arthur's presence is palpable in the way he carries himself and how his eyes dart about the room, framed by thick eyebrows. His dusty corn blond hair falls across his forehead, buffeted by the wind outside. He's wearing a button up shirt covered by a handsome, verdant green vest.
Arthur's eyes land on him and stay. Alfred focuses on giving a little wave of his hand in acknowledgement to keep himself from staring.
They order; Alfred gets a pumpkin spice latté, and Arthur gets earl grey tea that comes in one of Bitty Bakes' decorated ceramic cups. They sit down outside on the rickety metal chairs. It's a café right by a plaza, so there's a pleasant hum of conversation and splashing water from the fountain with a statue of a young ballet dancer, raised arms leading to the elegant curve of her back while water fans out from her waist in a shimmering skirt and reveals the continuation of the subtle curve through her straightened legs. With April coming to a close, the streets are damp from a recent rain shower, but the flowers and trees scattered about are bursting into brilliant colors.
They sit silently.
"So, can I at least talk to you?" Alfred says.
"It's not like I can shut your mouth," Arthur says. Alfred laughs.
"I thought the same for you, the way you were going on that night. But obviously all it takes is public social interaction to keep you quiet."
Arthur sips his tea and glares.
"I'm Alfred F Jones by the way."
Arthur nods and stirs his steaming drink.
Alfred waves his hand about in the air and says. "So, what do you do?"
"I'm an editor."
Alfred holds in his exasperation with a fair bit of effort. When nothing further is forthcoming, Alfred just takes it upon himself to fill the silence. The conversation dissolves into a monologue from Alfred, hands waving, latté cooling. To be fair, it's interspersed with a couple remarks from Arthur, even if they are biting.
Arthur glances down at his watch–probably to demonstrate whatever snark he was about to spout about Alfred's most recent story involving a spatula, an egg, the roof, and every single one of his lab friends–and blinks at it.
"I've got to go. I have to send the idiots I'm working with emails to remind them of their deadlines." He goes to pick up his empty cup of tea, to find that a waiter picked it up a while ago. There's another blink of disoriented confusion before he shakes his head, straightens up, grabs his crutches, and walk away.
"See you later then!" Alfred calls after him. Arthur gives a noncommittal wave over his shoulder.
It somehow becomes a habit, despite Arthur's complaints. Every five to seven days Alfred will call him up to make sure he's coming and then monologue at him over a cooling drink of whatever–he tries something different every time–while Arthur sips at his tea, leaving when it's gone.
It's fun to talk to someone who's never heard any of his favorite stories before and seems to like listening to every single one of them.
Alfred ignores the kissy faces Matthew gives him with a roll of his eyes. The man is cute, but not boyfriend material.
They text occasionally, but Arthur seems to invariably revert back to email format, all formal introductions and paragraph long answers. They quickly decide to use the text messenger for only reminders of meeting times and links: Alfred linking cat videos and the newest scientific discoveries, Arthur linking in-depth commentaries on old and new books and poems and impressive dance music videos.
Stories and friendly discussions are saved for their meetings at Bitty Bakes at what evens out to occur an average of twice a week.
"So, what do you do when you're not editing, Artie?" Alfred's leaning back in his chair, looking up at the cloudy sky. It was a long day at the lab, and he's not really sure why he didn't call this meetup off. So, he's throwing out the conversation hook in hopes of catching Arthur on some kind of interesting rant that might wake him up. The fact that none of his prompts have worked before doesn't mean that this one will fail.
"Editing takes up a lot of time, Alfred." Arthur's still isn't over his nickname apparently.
"Yeah, but you have to have some interests besides editing."
Arthur rolls his eyes, "If you really want to know, I dance."
"Are you any good?"
"Of course I am! I mean-" Arthur clears his throat. "-I'm no professional. But I've been in a few local performances, I was part of a college team, and I practice in my free time." Alfred can't help but glance down to where Arthur's foot is carefully placed on the ground. Arthur straightens his back, eyes dropping down to his swirling tea. "I mean. I did practice. I. I will practice."
Alfred feels like he's about to lose something here and he scrambles to keep Arthur from getting lost in his tea, lost from the conversation, lost from Alfred. "I guess someone like you would like dancing, but what's the point really?"
"Someone like me!?" Arthur spluttered, glaring at Alfred and putting his tea down with a distinct clink. "Dancing is a highly respected physical and mental skill. It preserves traditional, culturally relevant techniques, while also allowing for plenty of modern and individual flair. Anyone can participate as either a performer or spectator, no matter their skill, but training is rewarding and should be respected for the time and effort it takes. It can build strength, and teamwork, and endurance, and flexibility and a plethora of skills in between! It's not confined to a single demographic, or whatever you're thinking, it spans time, space, and culture with its messages and spontaneity. You can't get that everywhere."
Arthur's eyes flutter down in the sudden pause, but they're soft and distant, not brittle and closed-in. "And, it's personal. It let's someone open up in ways they can't anywhere else."
A bubble of contemplative silence settles around them.
"I think that's what I find so attractive about writing as well." Arthur's mouth curves into the slightest of smiles, the kind of smile that you're completely aware of and know is revealing too much, but you allow to persist anyway. Because what's so wrong about showing a bit of yourself?
Arthur finishes his tea.
Alfred looks out at the sky.
{Chapter 1 of 3}